Adventure Magazine Cover, October 1911 — page 89: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Through Perilous Peru hundred miles in length, starting at Goyl- larisquisga on the Cerro de Pasco Railroad, descending the eastern slopes of the Andes and crossing the Huallaga River and a great table-land known as the Pampa del Sacra- mento. What the engineer did, what he saw and what trials he was obliged to under- go are told in this article. Our plight at timeswas desperate. That our party finally emerged from the jungle and gained the Ucayali with its work done and only one white man lost may be considered the re- sult of undying determination mingled with good fortune. LOOK OUT FOR THE CASHIBOS! WE LEFT Lima in August, 1909, with not a little regret, for Lima had been good to us. The arm-chairs in the Phoenix Club had been very comfortable chairs and from their upholstered depths we and the gregarious Englishmen, whose club it was, had built railroads and dug mines and shot things in all parts of the globe for several weeks. The Englishmen had all knocked about a bit, they said, and, when a Brit- isher tells you that, it generally means something, but none of them had done much in the region toward which we were headed. They only drank their tea and listened to our plans and nodded pleas- antly. ‘Wish you luck, old fellow,” they said. ‘‘Look out for the Cashibos!” Down at El Club Nacional the very hospitable Peruvians said the same thing in a manner a trifle more ornate, but none the less genially and with no less a note of warning. After a few afternoons and even- ings of these hints, R. M. Brown, one of the party, and I looked into the matter of the Cashibos. A few hours’ conversation with those who knew showed us that while half of our troubles might be concerned with food the other half would almost cer- tainly involve attempts to keep from be- coming food. Brown came to me the afternoon of our last ride on the Paseo Colon with a rather serious light in his eye. “I’ve been looking up these Cashibo fellows that live over in the Pampa del Sacramento,” said he, “and I find that there’s only one thing they won’t eat!” “Let’s take it along,” I replied. “Tf you like,” he answered. “It’s a Chinaman. Old Chong Lung, who runs 1035 the roulette whee at the Chinese joint, told me last night between spins that the only man who has ever been allowed to live in their country without being eaten is an old wizened-up trader he used to know back Canton way, who is so dry that he crackles when he walks. He says the trader told him that the Cashibos are particularly soft on babies.” “We're not taking along any babies this trip,’ I remarked. “We'll have to go through just the same, Cashibos or no Cashibos. Are you coming?”’ “Certainly I’m coming!” Brown an- swered in injured tones. ‘‘ You don’t sup- pose I’d back out just because they want to eat me, do you?” Brown would have made a big killing but a poor meal—strong and rugged, stand- ing over six feet in height, a Houston boy with all the Texan’s readiness for adven- ture. At this time he was twenty-eight years old and had already done considerable hard work. Coming out of college at the University of Texas the Big Ditch had caught his eye as the most promising job and he had dug and hustled trains around in the Culebra Cut until breaking yardage records became too prosaic for words. __ About that time some one touched off a political magazine a few days farther south and Brown hustled down into Ecuador, getting in on the heels of a revolution and feeling very peevish because they didn’t need any more generals or colonels. He told me that he stayed around in Ecuador for a solid six months buying bad brandy for café anarchists and trying to stir up another revolution so that he could send a picture of himself wearing a sword back to a Miss Somebody in Houston, but that the Ecuadoreans were a bunch of benighted bean-eaters and that the revolution: busi- ness was very poor and on a dead center. Every one was complaining about it, he said. “Never mind,” said I. ‘Perhaps you can get in some of your ‘inside’ work among the Cashibos.”’ : “T hope so,” he answered innocently. “Perhaps I could get to be a king. They’d think a lot of that back.in Houston.” Up at Cerro de Pasco we picked up Flem- ing and McClure. Fleming was a Yale man out of Sheffield Scientific School and came from Pittsburg. He also was young and strong, and hungry for a dangerous job. © MICLOOKS CO